Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1887-09-14
THE QUEENS OF HOME" !"
0THERE ARE THREE.SCORE
QUEENS.o
so SOLOMON, BY ONE STROKE, SET
FORTH THE IMPERIAL CHARAC-
TER OF THE TRUE CHRIS
TIAN WOMAN.

I
FORTH THE IMPERIAL CHARAC-
TER OF THE TRUE CHRIS
TIAN WOMAN.
IT is WOMANS RIGHT TO BRING
Us THE KINGDOM OFHEA YEN.
An Eloquent Tribute to Woman and Hell
Worth.
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON, SEPT. 4TH
| The HAMPTONs, September 4th.-The
Rev. DR.. T. De Witt Talmage's text to-day
was from Solomon's Song, chapter vi,
verse s: "There are three score queens. p
Following is the sermon in full:
So Solomon by one stroke, set forth the
imperial character of true Christian wo-
man. She is not slave, not a hireling, not
a subordinate, but queen; and in my text
Solomon sees sixty of these helping to make
up the royal pageant of Jesus. In a former
sermon showed you that crown and court
ly attendants and imperial wardrobe were
not necessary to make a queen; but that
graces of the heart and life will give corona
ton to any woman. l showed you at some
length that a woman's position was higher
in the world than mans, and that although
she had often been denied the right of suf-
frage, she always did vote and always would
vote by her influence, and that her chief
desire ought to be that she should have
grace rightly to rule in the dominion in
which she has already won. began an
enumeration of some of her rights, and this
morning resume the subject.
Tn the first plapn yvnmQr has the anncial
and superlative right-not again going back
to what have already said-woman has
the special and superlative right of blessing
and comforting the sick.
What land, what street. what house, has
not felt the smitings of disease? Tens
of thousands of sick beds! What shall we
do with them? Shall man, with his rough
hand and clumsy foot go stumbling around
the sick room trying to soothe the distract
ed nerves, and alleviate the pains of the tos-
sing patienta The young man at college
may scoff at the idea of being under mater
nal Influences but at the first blast of the
typhoid fever on his cheek, he says:
''Where is mother?" Walter Scott wrote
partly in satire and partly in compliment
when he said:
20 woman, in our hours of case,
Uncertain, coy and hard to please;
When pain and anguish wiring the brow,
A ministering angel thou"
l think the most pathetic passage in all
the Bible is the description of the lad who
went out to the harvest field ofShunem and
got unstruck-throwing his hands on his
temples and crying out: ooh, my head! my
head!" and they said: "Carry him to his
mother" And then the record is: "He sat
on her knees till noon and then died. It
is an awful thing to be i'll away from home
in strange hotel, once in awhile men COM
ing in to look at you, holding their hand
over their mouth for fear they will catch
the contagion. How roughly they turn
you in bed. How loudly they talk. How
you long for the ministries of home. 1
knew one such who went away from one of
the brightest of homes, for several weeks
business absence at the West. A telegram
came at midnight that he was on his death
bed, far away from home. By ex-
press train the wife and daughters went
westward; but they went too late. He fear
ed not to die, but he was in an agony to
live until his family got there. He tried to
bribe the doctor to make him live little
while longer. He said: 81 am willing to
die, but not alone" But the pulses flut-
tered, the eyes closed, and the heart stop
ped. The express trains met in the mid
night; wife and daughters going westward
-lifeless remains of husband and father
coming eastward. Oh, it was sad, pitiful,
overwhelming spectacle When we are
sick we want to be sick at home. When
the time comes for us to die, we want to
die at home. The room may be very hum
BILE, and the faces that look into ours may
be very plain; but who cares for that? Low
;,,cs Ion Ac fo hot ha fap r
voices to speak good cheer. Loving lips to
read the comforting promises of Jesus. In
our last dreadful war, men cast the cannon;
men fashioned the musketry; men cried to
the hosts: "Forward, marchv' men hurled
their battalions on the sharp edges of the
enemy. crying: "Charge! charged" but wo-
man scraped the lint; woman administered
the cordials; woman watched by the dying
couch; woman wrote the last message to
the home circle; woman wept at the soli-
tary burial attended by herself and four
men with a spade. We greeted the Gen
eral home with brass bands, and triumphal
arches, and wild huzzas; but the story is too
good to be written anywhere, save in the
chronicles Of heaven, of Mrs. Brady, who
came down among the sick in the swamps
of the Chickahominy; of Annie Ross in the
cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret Brecken-
| ridge, who came to men who had been fOi
weeks with their wounds undressed-sOme
| of them frozen in the ground, and when she
turned them over those that had an arm left
waved it and filled the air with their ''hur.
rahp'-of Mrs. Hodge, who came from
Chicago with blankets and with pillows
until the men shouted: "Three cheers for
the Christian Commission! God bless the
women at home;;' then sitting down to take
the last message: "Tell my wife not to fret
about me, but to meet me in heaven; tell
her to train up the boys whom we have
loved so well; tell her we shall meet again
in the good land; tell her to bear my loss
like the Christian wife Of Christian sol.
dier'-and of Mrs. Shelton, into whose face
| the conYalescent soldier looked and said
"Your grapes and cologne cured me-" Men
did their work with shot, and shell, and
| carbine, and howitzer; women did their
work with socks, and slippers, and band
ages and warm drinks, and Scripture tests,
and gentle strolzings ofthe hot temples, and
stories of that land where they never have
any pain. Men knelt down over the wound.
ed and said: "On which side did you 6ght?''
Women knelt down over the wounded and
said: "Where are you hurt ?'' What nice
thing can make for you to eat? What
tudkeS you cry 1O-nlSuI, Wlli6 we men
are sound asleep in our beds, there will be a
light in yonder loft; there will be groaning
down that dark alley; there will be cries Of
distress in that cellar. Men will sleep, and
women will watch.
Again: Woman has superlative right to
take care of the poor. There are hundreds
and thousands of them all over the land.
There is kind of work that men cannot do
for the poor. Here comes group of little
barefoot children to the door of the Dorcas
Society. They need to be clothed and pro-
vided for. Which of these directors of
banks would know how many yards it
would take to make that little girl dress?
Whichsof these masculine hands could fit a
hat to that little girls head? Which of the
wise men would know how to tie on chat
new pair of shoesa Man sometimes gives
his charity in rough way, and it falls like
the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit
comes down so heavily that it breaks the
skull of the man who is trying to gather it.
But woman glides SO softly into the house
of destitution, and finds out all the sorrows
of the place, and puts SO quietly the dona-
tion on the table, that all the family come
out on the front steps as she departs, ex-
! ~ 4I-<Ar r.--~ L. 4